Saturday, October 25, 2008

A QUICK PEEK AT WHAT THE NEXT TWO WEEKS HOLD FOR VANDERBILT

The Commodores tee it up against Duke in less than an hour. (I'm talking about a football tee; generally, I dislike using metaphors from one sport to describe another sport.) Anyway, I just noticed that Florida is beating Kentucky 35-3 at halftime. Some thoughts:

• This Duke game is huge, and I think every Commodore knows it. We've got a bye week next week, and then we play Florida, who's taking the Cats to the woodshed right now. So we're not looking ahead to next week because we're not playing anybody, and we're dang sure not looking ahead to Florida. • Speaking of a bye week, the last thing we want to do is spend two full weeks thinking about a loss to Duke. Remember how great our last bye week was? We'd just beaten Ole Miss in a miraculous way and we had a couple days to celebrate being undefeated and then two weeks to prepare for Auburn.

• Speaking of that bye week before Auburn, remember how well our coaches and players handled the pressure and the excitement of being undefeated, hearing talk about how great they were, hosting GameDay on campus, facing the then-No. 13 team in the nation, preparing for what was then a premiere college football team with a devastating defense?

• Speaking of a premiere college football team, it's nice not to have to think about playing Florida next week. We'll have two weeks to prepare for the Gators, during which the Gators will be preparing for and then recovering from the latest college game of the year against Georgia.

• This bye week will be great if we can beat Duke, and it will be torture if we lose. We'll know in about four hours.